Description

Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Persian Carpet is an adventure game with the classic character created by Arthur Conan Doyle. The Scotland Yard calls Holmes about a peculiar crime, where a young painter was found murdered and rolled up in a Persian carpet.

The gameplay is combination of point-and-click adventure standards with hidden object mechanics. Starting in Holmes apartment, the game shows on the upper left three icons for quick access to the apartment itself, a Victorian London map where several locations appear as the investigation goes further and Scotland Yard.

Holmes apartment has a blackboard and a chemistry table. When clicked, the blackboard shows the deduction board, a grid where objects and suspects are placed (sometimes automatically) in order to lead to the murderer and the case solution. The chemistry table is where Holmes analyses collected objects, looking for clues.

In the Scotland Yard, Holmes can read reports and review testimonies and suspects' profiles.

Each location is presented as a screen with an inventory box at the bottom. This box has silhouettes of objects that the player must collect by finding and clicking on them. After being stored in the inventory, they can be used as any object on a regular adventure game.

The lower part of the inventory has two icons, a jigsaw piece for "assembly" and gears for "use". Dragging and dropping an object on one of them performs the action (for example, dropping a shredded letter in the jigsaw piece brings up a separate screen where the letter must be reassembled). These icons turn golden when there are no further use for them on the scene.